George Soros Builds Stake In Motorola Solutions

Date: Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Author: Shira Ovide and Brett Philbin

According to fresh investment disclosures, Soros Fund Management added to its holdings in Motorola Solutions during the third quarter.

George Soros’s hedge fund, which recently closed to outside investors, reported owning 6.6 million shares of Motorola Solutions as of Sept. 30. Motorola Solutions sells radios and other tech gear to police forces and local governments. Three months earlier, Soros reported owning 5.66 million Motorola Solutions shares.

Soros Fund Management also added a new debt and equity stake in SanDisk Corp.

Soros, who famously dubbed gold “the ultimate asset bubble,” also continued to juggle his positions in the precious metal, adding call and put options on the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD), a popular gold exchange-traded fund.

Among his new holdings, Soros disclosed owning a 278.3 million in SanDisk senior convertible notes, worth $270.7 million. He also reported a 395,000 equity stake in the flash-memory device maker valued at $15.9 million.

Overall, the value of Soros’s holdings fell to $5.8 billion at the end of the third quarter, down from $7.1 billion as of June 30. Four of his top seven positions were in convertible securities, the filing showed.

In May, Soros had reportedly joined other leading investment firms in a retreat from gold and other metal stocks. But in the third quarter, he added a call option for 145,000 shares in the SPDR Gold Trust valued at $22.9 million. He also disclosed owning put options on 120,000 shares of the fund worth $19 million.

A few months ago, Soros recently turned his hedge-fund firm into a “family office,” a move that allows it to avoid a new level of regulatory oversight facing many hedge funds.

Many investors that manage more than $100 million are required to file with the SEC Form 13-Fs disclosing their stock holdings within 45 days of the end of a given quarter, giving the public its freshest possible glimpse into the portfolios of well-known money managers. The third-quarter deadline was Monday.